Fallout 3: The New York Wastleland
Allentown, Pennsylvania
February 18, 2277
The clouds seemed to completely swallow up the moon, only a dull light appearing where it should have been. Darkness had crept along the ruins of the once sprawling city, but the wasteland never slept. The buzzing of the bloatflies, the rattling of a radscorpion, the howl of a wild dog, the distant growling of a Deathclaw, and even the close sounds of fists hitting flesh and the agonizing screams accompanying them were all a testimony to the fact that the wasteland itself was a living organism...like a ghoul; disfigured and irradiated....but alive. Even though he was very aware of these sounds, the darkness spoke another language to Tristan Hale; it never failed to reach out and embrace him as kin and reveal its innermost secrets to him.
Hale stood precariously close on the edge of the topmost beam of the ruined building, his arms folded. He had taken off his leather gloves to better feel the night air on his skin and held them in his right hand. He stood with his eyes closed, and as the gentle breeze touched his face, he turned his face upward as if to kiss the air itself. As always, he felt a twinge of irritation as he became aware that the dark combat armor he was wearing was preventing him from experiencing the full caress of the night breeze. With his eyes still closed, he started gently swaying back and forth on his feet and slowly opened up his arms.
"Hale!" the shout came from far below. He stopped swaying and stood perfectly still.
"Hale!" the shout came again, "The ghoul is saying something we think you should hear."
The clouds had broken and the moonlight seemed like a cruel intrusion into his silent ritual. Hale opened his eyes, and even in the moonlight one could see that they were a striking blue. His pale skin stood out in contrast to his short-cropped black hair and dark combat armor. The emblem of the Talon Company shone bright against the dark breastplate. He slowly lowered his head and looked at the 3 figures down on the ground 3 storeys below.
He reached back with his hand to see if his assault rifle was firmly in its place and took a deep breath.
Hale jumped. He landed on a jutting concrete beam 10 feet down, and easily hopped to another beam 5 feet away just about a foot wide. He walked to the end of the beam and jumped down another 10 feet to a part of an intact tiled floor on the 1st storey and started walking on a metal bar just wide enough to accommodate the width of his boot. He came to a broken window on the side and jumped on to the sill and jumped the final 14 feet easily to the ground below.
One of the figures down below whispered to another "Man, how the fuck does he do that?"
It was loud enough for Hale to hear. He smiled inwardly and started walking towards them. Hale had an uncharacteristically soft voice when compared to the rest of his appearance; some would have described it as almost feminine though none who knew Hale ever had described it as such.
Another group of about 20 men were talking about 40 feet away and they ceased their chatter as they watched Hale walk up to their 3 comrades.
"Status, Joe" Hale said simply to the tallest of the three. All of them wore the same dark combat armor as Hale. Joe was a man in his late 20s with tousled red hair and a ruddy complexion.
"We've stocked up on about a ton of food, brahmin meat mostly. No purified water. Very few stimpaks. A couple of weapons, a 10 mm and a 32 and some of the corresponding ammo. No laser weapons, but strangely they were well stocked on microfusion cells, about 400." Joe paused. "They were about 46, we killed about 18, mostly men. There were only 3 ghouls. Two are dead and the one who is alive is the one I am telling you about."
One of the men standing beside Joe cleared his throat slightly. Joe looked at him, then turned back to Hale. "There are 3 female humans who are uninjured. Some of the men would like to...." he trailed off.
Hale gave a slight nod, to which the other men's faces lit up a bit. Hale had almost never denied his men the spoils of raids. Nonetheless, they had never failed to ask him first.
"What is the ghoul saying, Joe?" Hale asked. Joe nervously fidgeted at his necklace of Super Mutant ears as he spoke "A settlement about 5 days' walk from here, to the East, named Brentwood Plaza, about 200 people, give or take a few."
"That would be the NYC wasteland" Hale said as he frowned and looked at Joe who was still fidgeting with his organic necklace. One of the old ears detached from the necklace and fell to the floor. Hale waited as Joe bent down to pick up his trophy.
"And?" Hale asked in a slightly irritated tone.
Joe started speaking quickly "By what he's saying, they're well organized and well stocked with supplies; they're also well defended, a variety of mines along the perimeter, frags, pulse, plasma, the whole works."
Hale regarded Joe with his steel blue eyes without a word. The taller man had just given a description that fit almost any organized settlement in the wasteland.
Joe stopped fingering his necklace and blurted out.
"They have a vertibird."
New York City, New York
February 19, 2277
"I swear m'man, I swear I heard it, look, it was right here" the young black man pointed out to a structure as he scooted ahead of his partner. His toe hit something jutting out of the ground, a piece of a car bumper or maybe it was a twisted part of a telephone pole; he wasn't sure. He had a pair of dusty sneakers on; they had probably been blue and white once upon a time, but now they were totally brown, a layer of mud and ash caked on them. He stumbled but caught himself. His partner, a tall black man in his late 20s called out to him in a deep weary voice "Watch yo ass, nigger! Lotsa broken glass and shit lyin' around here."
He looked around and took in the bleak surroundings. His shrewd eyes scanning for anything useful or unusual…like a radscorpion. He had taught himself to scavenge and forage a long time ago. He wore dark blue jeans, roughly cut off at the knees, and a purple T-shirt that said "CAT" on the front in bold yellow letters. He had a worn black baseball cap on his head. It had been a gift from his cousin a long time ago, and he had a deep attachment to it. He took of his cap and ran his hand over his bald head. He started scratching at his goatee beard as he slowly started walking up to the younger man, his eyes slowly and carefully taking in every aspect of the area.
They were at the foot of a building that might have once been a skyscraper, but now it was only 8-9 stories high, and it was bent slightly towards them. The sun was still high in the sky, just past noon, but the building, like the mutilated torso of a titan, threw a great shadow where they stood. He looked into the dark crevice the younger man was looking into.
The elder man spoke out, "Tell me again, Ozzy, what did it sound like?"
The younger man turned from the dark cave-like crevice on the side of the building, "Well, it was kinda like people talkin, y'know, like far away, but then I heard something like a freakin' big bang, like metal on metal, and then it was like squealing tires."
The older man just stood there, looking at Ozzy, "freakin' big bang" he muttered under his breath. Ozzy caught the look on his elder companion's face "Ah, Jules, mah man, I swear, I ain't on them chems no more, I swear, man!"
Jules looked at Ozzy for a full ten seconds before he spoke, "Level with me, nigger, you found a new stash of Jet somewhere?" Ozzy had a pained expression on his face. He was sixteen and he hated it. He also hated the fact that people seldom took him seriously.
"Man, I'm over that shit, I'm tight now" he blurted out quickly and angrily. He turned back towards the entrance, and started fidgeting at an iron rod jutting out of the side, like a huge toothpick in the jaws of a dragon.
Jules took another of his characteristic pauses. He looked at the cave-like entrance Ozzy was standing at, then glanced upwards; the structure was leaning towards them and even at this hour of the day the interior in the crevice was dark and there seemed to be nothing but the usual concrete rubble inside. Ozzy might be a crackhead, but even he would never make a big fuss about nothing, but Ozzy would be the last person he would want with him when he was off exploring uncharted territory. He would have to come back with a couple of the other guys.
He turned around and started walking towards Brentwood Plaza, he looked over his shoulder and called to Ozzy "Let's go, nigger." Ozzy's shoulders fell as he said sadly, "Man, you still think I'm on that shit, dontcha?" but he started following the older man.
Brentwood Plaza, NYC
2nd floor, Administrative Office
February 19, 2277
The atrium was dimly lit with sporadic barrel fires across the atrium. The last dying rays of the sun seemed blood red as they ebbed with the approaching night. Jeffrey Corbin stood at the window of his 2nd floor office overlooking the internal atrium of the plaza. His old and weary eyes squinting as he tried to make out the people in the various groups sitting around in the atrium. Patricia Bailey and her class of 14 children, ages varying from 6 to 10. He watched as her hands moved animatedly, her expressions changing from time to time but mostly a bright smile kept litting up her face as she narrated one of the Grimm fairy tales the children had come to love. Every once in a while, she would make a sudden movement with her arms and body, a menacing expression on her face, and there would be a collective jerking motion as her young audience recoiled in horror, but at other times there would be laughing, clapping, and jumping up and down He couldn't hear what she was saying, but he could guess it was Sleeping Beauty again today. You're the happiest of us all he thought, mostly because you're doing something you love to do.
His eyes moved over the different groups and rested on the farthest one with Mark Blackwell. Corbin remembered the first time he had met Mark. Corbin remembered how the 10-year-old had screamed when he saw Corbin approach. Corbin had had to light up the dark basement quickly so that the youngster could see that he was a human and not a monster. The boy's mouth was stretched into a rictus of terror, a grimace Corbin would never forget. Nevertheless, the child, scared and starving for almost 5 days, had fainted, and Corbin had had to carry him out of the house, stepping over the dismembered and partially devoured bodies of Mark's father, mother, and two sisters. He remembered thinking that there could be no greater horror for a 10-year-old boy than watching his family ripped apart by Deathclaws.
Mark was sitting with five other people near the right-sided entrance of the plaza. Corbin could make out Jules Smith, Carl Trenton, George Kowalski, and Jake Moon. He strained his eyes to determine the fifth figure wearing a hoody and was surprised to see that it was Ozzy. Ozzy usually steered clear from Mark and his gang. From the looks of it, George was the only one talking as the rest looked on. They would occasionally all look at Ozzy and one of them would snicker and shake his head.
He made a mental note to talk to Kowalski later. He had been picking on Ozzy a lot more these days. Corbin turned away from the window and rubbed his eyes. He walked up to a cabinet and opened it. The contents of the cabinet had always stirred painful memories in him, but regardless he had kept coming back to the cabinet every day.
Jeff, please help us…they're everywhere…I lost Arthur…please, Jeff, please…I don't want to die, please, please..Oh my God, Jeff, they're inside, please…
….Please acknowledge, Corbin….do NOT, repeat, do NOT approach Detroit… Fort Valiant lost….evacuation transport destroyed…extraction is no longer an option…Keep heading north…..your best bet is the Commonwealth…escort your team to….
He shook his head sharply as he felt his knees weaken and give out slightly. He quickly reached up with both hands and clasped the cabinet swivel doors. I failed them. I loved them and I failed them. He started breathing deeply, and after a slow steady count of ten his knees regained their strength. He looked into the cabinet.
He reached out with his hand and brushed off an imaginary speck of dust from the power armor helmet.
Brentwood Plaza Atrium
February 19, 2277
Mark Blackwell had the odd habit of scrunching his face into a childish grimace, the kind of expression a child would make as if to say "gross!" Mark himself had never explained the reason behind his habit probably because even he couldn't explain it, and everyone had eventually gotten used to it.
Mark had silently looked on as George, the loudest of the bunch, had kept on deriding Ozzy. George was probably the most irritating person he had ever come across, but Mark had never expressed what he actually thought of George; in fact, he had never let anyone know what he was thinking about them, and now as he scrunched his face, he sat forward slightly and took a deep breath. Jules caught his expression out of the corner of his eye and looked at Mark, who smiled as he looked at Ozzy. George looked at Mark and stopped in mid sentence. He knew when Mark was about to say something, and whenever Mark spoke, everyone listened.
"Ozzy" Mark said in a deep mellow voice. Jake Moon, who always thought Mark could be unnecessarily dramatic at times, pulled long and hard at his cigarette.
"Ozzy" Mark repeated, "You still got that flashlight I gave you a couple of months ago?"
George Kowalski starting giggling "Maybe Dusty turned in his ass and the flashlight for a shot of Psycho."
Mark's eyes moved to Kowalski who dropped silent mid-snicker. Ozzy looked up at Mark. The fire was crackling silently in the rusty barrel amid their little campfire in the atrium, and for a moment he could see Mark's eyes reflecting the fire perfectly. Ozzy looked away quickly and nodded.
"We set out at daybreak tomorrow, Ozzy; let's check out that sound you heard" Mark said.
Jules spoke up "Mark, I know where it's at. There's no reason for Ozzy to hitch along."
Mark looked at Jules and then at Ozzy, "Ozzy was the one who found the place, and if there's something to salvage I believe he deserves a first look at what turns up as well as a fair share" Mark said, all the while looking at Ozzy who didn't bother looking up.
"Just toss the bitch a couple of chems and he'll be in heaven" George started giggling uncontrollably.
It seemed the most smallest of gestures. Mark just casually tapped the butt of his assault rifle on the tiled floor of the atrium, but the sound was enough to shut George up once again.
No one else spoke. "Be ready at dawn, Ozzy" Mark said and looked at Jules who was frowning his disapproval but remained silent.
----To Be Continued